Thank you for reading!

"Twist of Fate"

This is a new beginning

I'm back in the land of the living

- Olivia Newton-John

Joyce almost had all the lights back up when someone knocked at the door. Banged on it, more like, obnoxiously on the glass, so she couldn't possibly miss it. It could only be Lonnie, back with some new way to pitch his greed, and when was he ever going to learn that when she said no, when she said get out, she meant it?

"Go away, Lonnie."

He didn't. He banged on the door some more. Furious, she threw the lights she was untangling on the floor and marched to the door. "Seriously! I am gonna murd—" The words died on her lips when she opened the door to find Jim Hopper standing there, holding a finger to his lips and a sign that said "DON'T SAY ANYTHING". "What?" she mouthed, taking the sign as he pushed his way into the house.

Hopper looked around, seeing all the lights hanging from the ceilings. Damn it, he had forgotten those. "Oh, Jesus," he muttered. This was going to take them all night. He reached up and unscrewed the nearest bulb, looking at the socket carefully. Then he pointed to Joyce, and to the bulb, and to the rest of the lights.

Her eyes widened, and she mouthed, "Seriously?"

He nodded, and kept unscrewing light bulbs. Joyce grabbed a crayon that lay on a table nearby and followed him, scribbling on the other side of the paper. She held it up to him. "What are we looking for?"

Taking the crayon, he scrawled "Bugs" on the paper.

"Bugs?" she mouthed. Then she shrugged, climbed on top of the coffee table, and started unscrewing light bulbs.

At last Hopper took out the last bulb. He was breathing hard—it had been a damned long day, and he hadn't stopped for so much as a cigarette in hours. But it looked like they were clear. There was no sign anyone had bugged Joyce's house. "Okay," he said, sinking into the nearest chair. "Should be okay. I mean … I can't guarantee it, but it should be okay."

"What the hell's going on, Hopper?"

"They bugged my place."

"What?"

"They bugged my place," he repeated. "They put a microphone in the light." He sighed, sinking further back into his chair, feeling a strange sort of safety for the first time all day, here with her. "It's because I'm onto them and they know it. I don't know …"

"Who?" Joyce broke in.

"I thought they might be watching you, too. I don't know, the CIA, the NSA, Department of Energy, I don't know."

"You've got to explain this to me, 'cause I am not—"

"I went to the morgue last night, Joyce."

She froze, terrified of what he might say. All day she had managed to push thoughts of that body away, of what it might mean, and here was Hopper with this crazy story saying he'd been to the morgue. "What?"

"It wasn't him."

For a second, she wasn't sure she had heard him right. She had known it, in her heart, but to hear Hopper confirm it was a whole different thing. "What?" she repeated, needing to hear it again.

"Will's body. It was a fake."

Joyce sank down in front of him, shaking with relief—not just to hear Hopper confirm that body hadn't been Will's, but to know she wasn't alone in this any longer. Hopper knew. And Hopper got things done. She thought back to high school, all the times she had gone to him for help and he had been there.

Hopper leaned forward in the chair, putting a hand on hers, holding her gaze steadily so she would hear him say it, clearly and distinctly. "You were right. This whole time, you were right."

She couldn't help the smile that came to her face, or the tears that came to her eyes. She clung to his hand like a lifeline.

"Joyce," he said gently. "I'm going to help you. We're going to find Will. I promise. But you have to tell me again, everything, from the beginning."

"From when Will was lost?"

"From the phone call."

"I …"

"But first—do you have any coffee?"

She looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time since he came to the house. "Have you eaten anything?"

"Not today."

"All right, let's get you something to eat." She tugged on his hand, pulling him up out of the chair and leading him to the kitchen. The refrigerator was pretty bare. "Turkey okay?"

"Anything."

"Okay." She pulled out the turkey and some wilted lettuce and the mustard.

"The phone call, Joyce."

"Right." She thought back as she assembled the sandwich, wanting to get this right. "The first phone call, there was just breathing. Scared breathing. And I called to him. 'Will?', I said, 'Is that you?', and the breathing changed. It was him, Hopper, I know it was him."

"I know, Joyce," he said patiently as she dug into a cupboard, finding a half-full bag of potato chips and putting it down in front of him next to the sandwich.

"So then I bought a new phone, and I waited, and the second time, I heard him. He said, 'Mom'. And then the phone shorted out again and turned black, like the first one had. Only this time I noticed the lights were blinking. But only in one place." She got out the coffee and the filters. "Then they blinked again, farther down the hall. So I followed it. And then the music came on in Will's room, this song he really likes, and the light got bright, so bright. I didn't know light bulbs could be that bright. And then the wall bulged, like something was coming out of it."

"The creature."

"But I didn't see him that time. I ran. But when I was about to drive away, the music came back on. Will stayed with me there in his room most of that night, blinking the lights on and off, but I couldn't figure out how to talk to him. So I bought all these lights on credit—Donald wasn't happy about it, but he did it—and hung them up, and he led me through the lights to the cupboard in the wall."

Hopper ate his sandwich and tried to follow the story, which got more convoluted as it went, as she consciously tried not to be defensive about it, to believe that he believed her.

"And I asked him if he was alive and he said yes, and I asked him if he was safe and he said no." Her face crumpled, and she held on to the sink. "But I couldn't ask him how to get to him," she went on, gathering herself together, "so I put up the lights with the letters, and I asked him where he was, and he said 'right here' and I asked him what he wanted me to do and he said 'run'. That's when the creature came out of the wall, and I ran. I got the axe later, but I forgot I had it. If I had only had the axe when the wall turned pink … God, I sound like a fucking maniac."

"Yeah, you do, but I believe you," Hopper reassured her.

Joyce nodded, sniffing a bit as she reached for the coffee cups. "I heard banging on the wall, and I ripped the wallpaper and the wall was pink, like … skin, or muscle, or something, and I could see Will through it, but I didn't remember the axe was there, so I couldn't get to him, and that thing was coming, and I told him to run and hide, and then …"

"That was when I came."

"Yes. And I couldn't feel him here any more. Before I could feel him. I knew he was here. Now …"

"We'll find him, Joyce. I promise." He reached for her hand as she put the coffee cups down on the table. "I promise."

"Thank you, Hop." They looked at each other for a second, then she squeezed his hand and let it go, reaching into the refrigerator for the milk. "Now, tell me. Why did you go to the morgue? I thought you thought I was crazy."

"I did," he admitted. "But then … they sent state troopers to take care of the body."

"Who's they?"

He shrugged. "Them. I don't know. But they sent Gary home, Gary's our coroner, and I thought why the hell would they do that for some kid from Hawkins, you know?" He glanced at her, hoping she wouldn't take offense, but she was nodding as she lit her cigarette. "So I went and talked to the cop who found the body, and he was … weird. Not right at all. And he said his orders were to keep everyone away from the body. Which meant something was wrong with the body. So I went to the morgue, and they hadn't done an autopsy at all. Nothing. And I—I cut into it, and it was a doll. Stuffed with stuffing, you know, that cotton stuff?"

"A doll? Not even a real person? I knew it!" Joyce leaned forward, her eyes bright.

"I know you did."

"So then what did you do?"

"I thought about coming straight here, telling you that you were right, but … you knew you were right. So I went to the lab, to see what was going on there, and … at first it looked like just an office, and labs, you know? But then there was this room where a little kid had lived—"

"A little kid?"

"Yeah, it had a small bed and some toys and things, but there was no one there, like it was abandoned. Like that whole section was abandoned. So I kept going and I went down the elevator—and the bottom floor of that place is like nowhere you ever saw. Like a horror movie. Dark and cold and there are things floating in the air."

"That's what Will said! He said it was dark and cold and like home."

"Maybe. There's some kind of viny hole in the wall, like a door into somewhere in a dark forest."

"And then what?"

Hopper shook his head, taking the cigarette casually from her, just another shared cigarette like hundreds before in high school. Some part of his mind was so at ease, back here with her, just like nothing had ever changed. "Then they cornered me and drugged me, and I woke up back at my place with drugs and beer cans and booze bottles all over the place, like they wanted anyone I talked to to believe I was out of my head. Not too far off for me these past few years," he admitted.

Joyce put a hand on his reassuringly. "What you went through, you're allowed to go crazy for a while."

"Yeah, but I'm done with that now."

"Good." There was a silence while Joyce lit another cigarette, since it seemed obvious Hopper wasn't about to give her first one back. She sat forward. "We've gotta go through this again."

"I told you everything that I saw."

"Just tell me again."

"Upstairs or downstairs?"

"Upstairs."

"There was a laboratory where they must do experiments or something, and then there was … there was this kid's room."

"How do you know it was a kid's room?"

Hopper leaned his head against his hand. God, he was exhausted. "More like a prison."

"Why would you think it was a kid's room, then?"

"Because, I told you, the size of the bed, there was a drawing, there was a stuffed animal—"

"You didn't say there was a drawing."

"Yeah, there was a drawing, of an adult and a child. It said 11 on it …"

"Was it good?" Joyce asked.

"It was a kid's drawing, Joyce, it was stick figures." What did it matter how good it was?

She got up and grabbed a paper from another table and brought it over, putting it down in front of him. It was … must be characters from that game the kids played, and they were admittedly good. The kid had talent.

"It wasn't Will," Joyce said, certain of it.

Hopper looked at the drawing. No, this was not the same kid who had done the stick figures in the lab. It had never occurred to him that it might not be Will. Then the pieces fell into place. A kid, a kid at Benny's, Earl saying the kid had a shaved head and Hopper assuming someone had taken Will and shaved his hair off so he would be harder to identify. "Earl," he said, getting up and going over to the couch, where his papers on this case were strewn across the coffee table. "The night that Benny died, Earl said he saw some kid with a shaved head with Benny." He sat down on the couch and Joyce followed him, sitting down next to him. "Now, I pressed him, he said it might be Will, but maybe …"

"Maybe, it wasn't?" Joyce asked.

"Look. This woman, Terry Ives, she claims to have lost her daughter, Jane. She sued Brenner, she sued the government … Now, the claims came to nothing, but what if— I mean, what if this whole time I've been looking for Will and I've been chasing after some other kid?"

"Well, how does this help us find Will?"

"If we go talk to this Terry Ives, maybe she can tell us what that thing is in the basement of the lab, and where it leads, explain what the hell is going on over there." He yawned suddenly.

"All right." Joyce stood up. "I'm going to get you some blankets, you're going to sleep on the couch, and we're going to go find this Terry Ives in the morning. And if she doesn't know anything, I'm going to track this Brenner down and get some answers."

Hopper smiled sleepily. "You almost sound scary."

"What I've gone through these past few days? I feel scary."

He caught her hand. "Hey. We're going to find him."

"I know we are. And Hopper? Thanks."

"I wish I'd figured it out sooner."

"You caught on soon enough." Joyce squeezed his hand and went to get the blankets. Will was still lost, but she wasn't, and now she could find him, with Hopper's help.